I'm hopefully going to have around 6k to invest shortly. Anyone got any interesting ideas to invest it? It's part of my pension, so it will need to be within the pension rules (it can't buy depreciating assets, domestic property or pay any of my own personal expenses like a mortgage). I have no clue about investments, but it's not money I can access otherwise and it's doing nothing where it is, so I'm up for a fairly short term, medium risk option. Ideally I'd like to reassess in about three years and I don't really want property as this is partly to balance things up a bit.

I'm not taking any replies as financial advice. I'm just looking for ideas. Also, it's not money I will need to meet basic living costs when retired. I have that covered otherwise, so I can be a bit creative with it.

It seems very odd to me that you can't buy residential property to rent out for example, but you are perfectly able to gamble on shady Bonds and shares. (Provided you pay your annual fees and trading "costs")

Start a pawnbrokerage perhaps - that should be a fairly good yield and the added advantage that you could start it small.

You are now allowed to buy gold as part of a pension plan if your interested in shiny stuff, bullion coins and bars are available easily enough and I use www.bullionbypost.com who have a section on their website about it I beleive

For a less interesting idea many current accounts pay pretty high interest rates, tsb offer 5% on balances of up to £2000, Lloyds and santandar also have good rates at the moment.

a) - rings, coins, bars, chains and bracelets which you keep in a cupboard or drawer. Or in a safe if you're posh !

b) "paper gold" which you can buy and it is held somewhere else. You get some form of "receipt" saying you own some "Gold". Presumably this is what you can "Now keep in a sipp" ?

This latter is reckonned to be "Gold" held by many to the tune of several times the entire world stock of physical gold and as such cannot actually exist in a way that you can actually touch it or take it home with you.

One of the expectations for the future is that sooner or later, people are going to realise this and the ensuing scandal could destabilise the world economy again.

b) "paper gold" which you can buy and it is held somewhere else. You get some form of "receipt" saying you own some "Gold". Presumably this is what you can "Now keep in a sipp" ?

This latter is reckonned to be "Gold" held by many to the tune of several times the entire world stock of physical gold and as such cannot actually exist in a way that you can actually touch it or take it home with you.

b) "paper gold" which you can buy and it is held somewhere else. You get some form of "receipt" saying you own some "Gold". Presumably this is what you can "Now keep in a sipp" ?

This latter is reckonned to be "Gold" held by many to the tune of several times the entire world stock of physical gold and as such cannot actually exist in a way that you can actually touch it or take it home with you.

What a wonderful idea. I suggest we call it "banking".

You are exactly right HL - "paper gold" is following the exact same route that the "Goldsmiths" took in pre-history.

The route which caused "(B)ankers" to write on their receipts "I promise to pay the bearer the sum of £1" or similar.

However, amusing though the gullibility of the masses might be, most people, told they have bought an ounce of gold, believe that and could get quite upset when they realise they have bought absolutely nothing at all, but have paid for it as though it was really an ounce of gold !

The reason I ask is that given current low rates you might be better off either paying off existing debts/mortgages or keeping it outside a pension to use as needed.

Bear in mind that while you wont get tax relief on it, if you get to pension age & then use it to buy an annuity part of the annuity will be treated as a refund of capital so not taxed, unlike an annuity bought via your pension.

Also the fees charged by many investment managers are huge and can wipe out any profits made.

Failing that there are a lot of community renewable schemes eg Abundance Generation

I think you would be better to seek some independent advice or look at some of the financial web sites. It's more than possible to get a fund that only charges 1% fees and many will charge much less. There may well be a trade off, I'd rather pay 2% fees on an annual return of 10% than 0.1% on a return of 5%. There's also no need to buy an annuity now.

Personally I would be wary of putting in a lump sum into the stock market at the moment, many of the markets are at the highest they've been for several years so quite likely to fall. You normally get advised to make monthly deposits to smooth out rises and falls. You should be able to put the lump sum in to a pension but invest the amount over several months.

£6k isn't a large amount so I wouldn't bother with the extra expenses of a SIPP but look at the low cost options from a normal pension provider. Make sure the charges are what you expect and there's no transfer penalties, then you can always move to a SIPP or similar later.

Hairyloon

Joined: 20 Nov 2008Posts: 15174Location: Today I are mostly being in Yorkshire.

a) - rings, coins, bars, chains and bracelets which you keep in a cupboard or drawer. Or in a safe if you're posh !

b) "paper gold" which you can buy and it is held somewhere else. You get some form of "receipt" saying you own some "Gold". Presumably this is what you can "Now keep in a sipp" ?

This latter is reckonned to be "Gold" held by many to the tune of several times the entire world stock of physical gold and as such cannot actually exist in a way that you can actually touch it or take it home with you.

One of the expectations for the future is that sooner or later, people are going to realise this and the ensuing scandal could destabilise the world economy again.

Yep its physical gold I was talking about, paper gold will become a problem as the central bank around the world increase there stocks of physical gold and suddenly realise there is not actually enough to go round, that's when I would expect to see a big rise in the price of physical gold but as to if that will happen in my lifetime we will havevto see, regardless if you have somewhere to store it safely it's not a bad mid to long term investment I don't think.
and it looks pretty lol.